Part 8

“You never know What Ideas Easterners will get into their Heads,” said the younger Miss Solbé. “East is East, and West is West.”

But now Christina Alberta’s attention was distracted by another set of phenomena. She had discovered that the thin, bald gentleman with side-whiskers, rigid behind his _Times_, was not really reading that interesting vestige of the British constitution at all. His gaze was not directed to the edge of his paper, but beyond it. He was staring from behind that ambush and round the corner of his glasses in a strange, hard-eyed way, without passion or admiration, at the upper part of Christina Alberta’s black-stockinged legs as they delivered their last challenge to human censure before disappearing beneath her all too exiguous but extremely comfortable skirt. And also she was realizing that a furtive but intense scrutiny of her bobbed hair was disorganizing the Patience of the whiskered gentleman’s daughter very seriously, and that it was also interfering with the proper laying out of a second and different sort of Patience by the elder Miss Solbé. And suddenly, to her extreme annoyance, Christina Alberta found a flush of indignation mantling her cheek, and a combative tingle passing down the backbone of her straight little body. “Why the devil,” Miss Preemby asked herself, “why the devil shouldn’t a girl cut her hair to save trouble and bother, and wear clothes in which she can walk about?” Anyhow, a mop of well-washed hair was ten times better than those feeble, aimless interweavings of pigtails and fringes and scraps and ends. And as for showing one’s legs and body; why shouldn’t one show one’s legs and body? It was just a part of the universal evasion of life by these people that had got most of their bodies hidden away, tied up in a sort of bundle. Do they ever venture to look at themselves? Those Solbé girls, once upon a time, they must have been jolly little girls with an amused interest in their stalky little legs, before they said Shush! and put them away.

Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a time. What becomes of legs that are put away and never looked at and encouraged? Do they get etiolated and queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and afraid of the light? And after you’ve really packed your body away and forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out and hands that wave about and feet with hidden and distorted toes; and you go about between meal-times and take trips in chars-à-bancs to see what every one sees and feel what every one feels, and you play games by rule and example according to your age and energy, and become more and more addicted to Patience until you are ready to cover yourself up in bed for the last time of all and die. Evasion! And the fuss they had caused getting born! The fuss, the morality and marriages and everything that was necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten!

But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ was evasion just as much. Just as much. All these photographs of the pushful pretty, the actresses for sale and the daughters who had to be sold, looked at you with just your own question in their eyes: “Is this the Life?” The unending photographs of Lady Diana This, and Lady Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a Friend of the Duke of York or the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, at horse-shows, at race meetings, at royal inaugurations and the like, were inevitably suggestive of obstinate doubts that were in need of a perennial reassurance. The photographs of people playing tennis and suchlike games were livelier, but there, too, if you care to look at it, were evasions. Evasions. Evasions.

Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the _Sketch_ without looking at the pictures before her eyes.

What was this Life she and these people and every one by games and jokes and meetings and ceremonies and elaborate disregards and concealments were all evading? What was this great thing outside, this something like a huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black monster, beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, that called to her and challenged her to come?

One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and games perhaps. One might evade it by living by rule or custom. People seemed to do so. A time might come when that call to Christina Alberta to be Christina Alberta to the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission to that immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress her life. She had thought that in a certain recklessness and violence with herself she might fight her way out to the call. She had made love now. Anyhow, she hadn’t evaded _that_. But--was it going to matter as much as she had thought it would matter? She and her little friends were playing desperate games with the material of love in a world where Dr. Marie Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence were twin stars, and it was just something you went through--and came out much as you had been before. More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just where you had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness and that mysterious, distressing, unanswerable call to come out of it all and really live and die.

She had made love.... Queer it had been....

These furtive people were watching and watching her, reading her thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her....

Christina Alberta shut her copy of the _Sketch_ with something of a snap, and walked out of the drawing-room with a serene expression. She shut the door behind her and went downstairs to find what had happened to her father in the smoking-room.

“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” reflected Christina Alberta.

§ 6

She found that her father and the gentleman from the forests of Burmah, after a very prolonged and brilliant “h’rrmping” match, had settled down to conversation. But unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for her.

“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such temples. They take you there and show you them.”

“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you do not think the carvings you speak of--? Some high symbolism?”

Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, attentive and hovering.

“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” and had complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish indecency. Difficult to discuss.... Presence of young lady.... H’rrmp.”

“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to say good night, my dear? We are having a rather--rather technical talk.”

“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and went round and sat on the arm of his chair for a moment.

“Good night, little Daddy,” she said.

Reflective moment.

“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. Preemby.

“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.”

§ 7

Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding House has been described with some particularity because it is a sample of all the still and uneventful evenings that seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby there. It impressed her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness in which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably occur to him. The last remote possibility of imaginative disturbance seemed to remove itself next day when Mrs. Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s wife that she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for the winter in the exact boarding house they had always had their eyes on. “Tunbridge seems so bleak,” she said. “After Burmah.”

The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of Passage had gone and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, Christina Alberta, the chubby maid and the assembled company by demanding whether it was possible to send out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an Italian wine,” said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the chubby maid in her inquiries. But there was no Chianti on the wine-list supplied, and after a conversation markedly reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage overnight, the Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of mineral water.

After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social derring-do, Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout the rest of the meal.

The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also vacantly similar to the previous evening. Christina Alberta got her possibly illegal cigarette in the lounge, indeed she smoked two, and Miss Margaret Rewster looked at her through the bead curtain near the office and Miss Emily had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into the smoking-room to gather whatever further information he could about the temple decorations and religious customs of the peoples of further India. He was inclined to think Major Bone rather biased by evangelical prejudice. But Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern religions that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked about Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail about a remarkable occurrence at Bath. He had met a gentleman named Bone, a gentleman much of his own age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic conversations between himself and the other Bone, occasionally going back and correcting himself. They had made the most elaborate comparison of their genealogies, and it did not appear that they were even remotely related. “Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” said Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.”

In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone was talking about Bath. The cheerful wife of the whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to Christina Alberta quite suddenly.

“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta.

“You had a walk to-day?”

“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock and Eridge Park.”

“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored her attention to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered she was to be noticed, but not made a pet of.

There was nothing for it but to go through the _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ again. This time the pictures were exhausted, but there were reviews of books and one or two short stories. Christina Alberta read them all.

When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had come to a decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, that’s the day after to-morrow, I must go back to London. There are some lectures beginning.”

Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition.

The third evening was in countenance like the second except that the Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta was sustained by the thought that next day she would pass from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the tangled riddles of London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair imperfectly controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle had broken down just outside Tunbridge Wells. He lived somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in Northumberland; he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three days while some broken part of his machine was replaced from Coventry; he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding House and it was jolly hard luck on him. He couldn’t budget for a trip to London; he would just have to sit down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate and a geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. These facts he conveyed across the width of the room to Mr. Preemby in the course of a rather one-sided conversation.

From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with impudent bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with neither bodily grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the life of her Daddy and herself.

When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis?

“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby.

“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.

“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby.

“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man of science. “Is there a Museum here?”

Mr. Preemby did not know.

“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”

Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr. Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that day, a second-hand copy of Rousseau’s _Confessions_. She went off to get it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the lounge smoking cigarettes.

“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.

“Oh! _I_ don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open mind, pausing before him.

“Nothing much doing--what?”

“It’s not a Gala Night.”

“I’m stranded.”

“You must bear up.”

“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit and forage around for some fun?” said the young man from Cambridge, taking his courage in both hands.

“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned to go on.

“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge.

“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta who would rather have been thought utterly shameless than the least bit prudish. “Good hunting.”

And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he was dismissed.

Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for another tremendous bout of nothingness. But anyhow she had got Rousseau to read, and to-morrow she would be in London.

About the Rousseau--? She had always wanted to know how she stood towards Rousseau.

He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think much of Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the New Hope Club girls. They’d have shown him.

§ 8

For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge Wells, and when she returned she had passed through a variety of experiences that will have their due effect upon the course of this story. This story is the story of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with that modern sort of novel which will not let a girl alone but must follow her up into the most private and intimate affairs. Christina Alberta was perplexed and worried and would have hated the pursuit of such a searchlight. Suffice it that events had crowded so closely upon her that for whole days together she thought scarcely at all of her possibly quite lonely little Daddy at Tunbridge Wells. Then came a letter that brought her bustling down.

“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that Very Important Communications indeed have been made to me _of the Utmost Importance_, and that I ought to tell you about them. They seem to alter all our lives. I know you are immearced in your studies, but these Communications are so Important that I want to talk them over with you soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it all, but very likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would much prefer to tell you here on the Common amid more congenial surroundings. Some of it you will find almost unbeleavable.”

“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading the letter. “Communications?”

She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

_The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes_

§ 1

“The scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from my eyes.”

He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded an extensive view of the town, the town crowned by the green cupolas of the Opera House and lying as though the houses had been shot out of a cart down the long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances of the Kentish hill country, blue and remote.

Christina Alberta waited for more.

“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an occasional h’rrmp; “all these experiences--difficult to relate. Naturally I think you are of a sceptical disposition--taking after your dear mother. She was very sceptical. Of psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was Nonsense. And when your dear mother said a thing was Nonsense, then it was Nonsense. It only made things disagreeable if you argued it was anything else. As for myself--always the open mind. No dogma either way. I just refrained.”

“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? How could you have psychic experiences down here?”

“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to see it as I saw it--in due order.”

“How did it begin?”

Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In my own way,” he said.

Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil resolution of his profile. There was no hurrying him; he had to tell his tale as he had prepared it.

“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very credulous sort of mind. It is true I am not given to argument. I do not _say_ very much. But I think and observe. I think and observe and I have a kind of gift for judging people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive.

“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It began at my suggestion. I do not know what put it into my head, but I do know that it was me started the whole thing going.

“You know, after your departure our little band at the Petunia Boarding House was reduced to just six persons, not counting the young gentleman from Cambridge who was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage. Naturally the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the two Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and there were Mr. Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss Hockleby, and there was me. We were drawn together at lunch after you had gone off--it was a little showery and we had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the one with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. We got into quite an interesting argument about whether it was possible to _will_ which card would turn up next. I have always inclined to the view that for certain people, people with the necessary gift, it was possible to do so, but Mr. Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical in the matter. He said that if there was a card on the top of the pack ready to turn up, and if one willed that a different card should turn up, then that meant that one had really by sheer will force to re-manufacture two of the cards in the pack, make them over again, each into the other, make them blank, reprint them and everything. But I tried to explain to him that this is not philosophically sound because of predestination. If you were predestined to will that such a card should be on the top of the pack, then that card was also predestined to be there. He argued----”

“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we get to your psychic experience?”

“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an extremely sceptical person.”

“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the discussions?”

“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down to the Garage to see if his Spare Part had come. He was always going down to the Garage to see about his Spare Part.”

§ 2

Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his narrative.

“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things really began. I went into the smoking-room--to smoke--and afterwards I went into the drawing-room, and when I went into the drawing-room I had no more thought of occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of flying over the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I saw Miss Solbé looking at her Patience cards which she had just put out, and the way she was holding her hands on the table reminded me of the way I had read that people put their hands together on the table when they were trying experiments in table-turning. And almost without thinking I said: ‘Why, Miss Solbé, the way you are holding your hands is just the way they do when they are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just like that.

“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time--the _Times_, I think, but it may have been the _Morning Post_--but he put it down when he heard me say that and he looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You don’t believe in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’

“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the way she spoke I think she must have been eating some sort of sweet or lozenge at the time. ‘_I_ do,’ she said. ‘We did it at home dozens of times before I was married.’

“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina Alberta; it seemed almost as though it was something behind myself that did it, or it may have been a sort of antagonism I have always felt about that man Hockleby; but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this table-turning.’

“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming young lady when you get to know her, and it seems she has been reading a little occult literature lately----”

“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding him with a look of novel suspicion.

“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two or three. Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite well-read, quite well-read. Well, anyhow, she said she would like to try it. And Miss Hockleby, evidently she had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines by her father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, we tried it. Only Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby overruled that. She was the only one among us who had ever seen anything of the sort before, and so it was she who arranged things and told us what to do. We chose a very solid table, the one that usually has the big aspidistra on it, and while we were turning out the light----”

“But why did you do that, Daddy?”

“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes the atmosphere more favourable. We lit a candle which Miss Margaret Rewster got for us and turned out all the electric lights; and while we were doing this, in came young Mr. Charles Fenton and said--_what_ did he say? A peculiar expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’”

“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?”

“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained what we were doing and asked him to join us. He declared he knew nothing of psychic phenomena, had never experimented with it at all and seemed very doubtful about taking part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in it,’ he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I remember now that he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, and then he came back and said it was raining. It’s very important to note that he was not at all eager to join us and that he was quite uninformed about occult things because, you see, as I will tell you, we found out presently that he was a person of exceptional psychic gifts, much greater psychic gifts than anyone else among us.